Constantly increasing demands of users motivate rapid development of mobile communication technologies. All modern electronic devices capable of accessing the Internet are using 3 Generation (3G) or 4G (e.g., long term evolution (LTE)), and next generation standards are being developed for the users to spend as short time as possible discovering desired information on the Internet.
The 5 Generation (5G) network is a next generation telecommunication network standard. The 5th generation standard operates at millimeter wavelengths, and the 5G signal length is significantly less than that of the 4G signal.
A solution U.S. Pat. No. 8,760,352 B2 (published on Jun. 24, 2014) is known which describes a mobile device and its antenna array. The solution U.S. Pat. No. 8,760,352 B2 discloses a low profile antenna, which has interleaved TX/RX antenna elements, covering end-fire (in the telephone's plane) and broadside (perpendicular to the telephone's plane) direction, and the antenna is made on LTCC technology. However, the solution may not be implemented in a mobile device with a metal case as electromagnetic radiation is distorted by the metal case.
A solution U.S. Pat. No. 3,225,351 (published on Dec. 21, 1965) is known, which describes a vertically polarized microstrip antenna for a glide path system. The solution discloses a traveling wave antenna array for guiding an airplane to a landing strip. However, the solution may not be implemented in the mobile communication technology. This is because it does not use the capability of scanning the space, so it may not work in a mobile device with a metal frame. In addition, since the antenna in this solution provides wavelengths 2-3 times greater than in an embodiment of the present disclosure, it is not proper for the field of mobile communication devices
A solution U.S. Pat. No. 7,595,765 B1 (published on Sep. 29, 2009) is known, which describes an embedded surface wave antenna with improved frequency bandwidth and radiation parameters. This solution provides embedded surface wave antenna elements incorporating different dielectric materials. The different dielectric materials may be arranged to be adjacent to a feed line, to avoid undesirable reflections in the antenna elements. Alternatively, different dielectric materials may be arranged to alter the velocity of energy through the antenna element, and thus to form the antenna radiation pattern. The radiation pattern may be further controlled through contouring an antenna element ground plane in a lens region of the antenna element. However, the teachings of present disclosure may be hard to be implemented in the field of mobile communication devices because it is not able to scan the space and has large dimensions. Also, it is designed for radiation basically in the broadside direction, and it is difficult to be embedded into a metal housing of a mobile device.